Sunday, August 17, 2014

Israel, Egypt and Abu Mazen have Hamas cornered with Russian help?

I don't like to sole-source DEBKA reports. But for reasons that I will explain below, I believe that there may be some element of truth to this one, which claims that Israel, Egypt and the 'Palestinian Authority' have managed to corner Hamas with Russian help (Hat Tip: Udi S).

Debkafile’s
intelligence sources report exclusively that Egyptian President Abdel
Fatteh El-Sisi, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and
Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas have lined up in a solid
phalanx against the Islamist Hamas-Islamic Jihad alliance.
Their lineup, backed from the wings by Saudi King Abdullah and Russian President Vladimir Putin, set itself five objectives:

1. To confront Hamas with a solid political-security front which is beyond its power to break.

2. To corner Hamas into accepting the Egyptian ceasefire proposion unchanged and unconditionally.

3. To compel Hamas to disarm, i.e. dismantle its rockets and
tunnels, so pulling the teeth of its military wing, Ezz e-Din al-Qassam.

4. To distance the Obama administration from the triple bloc’s dealings with the Palestinian Islamist factions.

5. To keep the Europeans from interfering in those dealings.

The foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany and Italy meeting
in Brussels offered Friday to take charge of Gaza’s border crossings and
work to prevent illegal arms flows.

Saturday, Cairo, Jerusalem and Ramallah politely informed Brussels
that they preferred to handle this situation on their own and no
European diplomatic or security assistance was needed.

The quiet shaping of this three-way alliance for resolving the Gaza
conflict, by means of a sustainable cessation of hostilities, kept most
of Israel’s and world media guessing, says debkafile.
In the interests of tight secrecy, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe
Ya’alon chose to keep the rest of the cabinet in the dark as well,
incurring loud complaints from ministers.

The proposition the three partners have formulated puts Hamas and
Jihad on the spot. The Arab world has abandoned them and their only
source of funding is Tehran. So their choices are grim: Face an
escalated war that Israel will fight until the bitter end, or swallow
hard and accept the only proposition on the table which is tantamount to
disarmament and capitulation.

Their isolation is complete. The Egyptian, Israeli and Palestinian
leaders have managed to cut Hamas away from any backing in Washington,
Qatar and Turkey as well as blocking its path to Moscow.

To encourage Hamas to choose the right path, the Israel Air Force is
cruising around-the-clock over Hamas bases and command centers in the
Gaza Strip, ready at a signal to switch to the offensive if the
Palestinian fundamentalists make the wrong choice in Cairo.

Mahmoud Abbas, who appeared to be sitting on the sidelines of the Gaza
conflict during Israel’s month-long military operation, finally threw in
his lot with Sisi and Netanyahu when it came to the crunch.

Second, because we know that President Hussein Obama and Secretary of State John FN Kerry favor Hamas, and that Vladimir Putin is an expert at making them look like fools running around in circles.

Third, there's this piece by Amos Harel in Haaretz explaining why the Egyptian cease fire plan is a disaster for Hamas.

In effect, according to one columnist from the Palestinian
Authority-affiliated Al-Ayyam newspaper, the proposal offers the same
understanding reached after Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, with
only cosmetic changes. All of the gestures made by Egypt toward the
Palestinians, like easing restrictions at border crossings and the
gradual elimination of the Israeli buffer zone within the Gaza Strip
come with a very heavy price, as far as Hamas is concerned: Renewed,
reinforced presence of Palestinian Authority forces in Gaza.

This
is a tough pill to swallow for Hamas, as are Egypt’s efforts to bring
the Oslo agreements back to the surface through the back door; Hamas
reviles Oslo even more than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does.
Therefore, it’s not surprising that official Hamas spokespeople
criticized the Egyptian proposal on Saturday. What is surprising is the
rather moderate reaction by the Islamic Jihad, always considered more
extreme than Hamas. It seems that the Islamic Jihad has recently been
warming up to Cairo, and perhaps is less committed to the comprehensive
demands that Hamas had set when the sequence of humanitarian cease-fires
began. Israel, at this point, has yet to issue an official response to
the Egyptian proposal, as it was leaked to the Arab media.

...

The quandary that Hamas faces is clear: without an achievement to tout,
the incredible sacrifice of Gaza’s population – roughly 2,000 dead,
hundreds of thousands of refugees, thousands of homes as well as
infrastructure destroyed – will seem for naught. On the other hand, the
long series of cease-fires might make it hard for the organization to
keep fighting. The humanitarian disaster in Gaza, along with electricity
and potable water shortages, has forced Gaza residents to focus on
rebuilding. The more hawkish approach, favored by Khaled Mehsal in
Qatar, would mean renewed suffering for the Gazan population.

Tzipi Livni may no longer be Israel’s foreign minister but she still has
a capacity to cause diplomatic tremors. Last weekend she did just this
by declaring that there was an agreement between Israel and Egypt to
strangle Hamas. Since there was no official affirmation or denial from
Cairo, despite calls from Hamas to do so, Livni’s remarks evoked a flood
of commentary. Few doubted that there is indeed an Israeli-Arab axis,
spearheaded by Egypt, whose immediate aim is to dismantle Hamas’ control
over the Gaza Strip. Ultimately, it also seeks to eradicate from the
region all structures of what they call political Islam.

...

[A]n item posted by the military spokesman Lt. Col. Muhammad Samir on
his Facebook page the day after Livni made her declaration did highlight
to some measure the current level of collaboration between Egypt and
Israel. He noted that the Egyptian army had destroyed a total of 1,659
tunnels in the border area between Gaza and Egypt; a feat which the
Israelis themselves could not have pulled off from their position on the
northern and eastern borders of Gaza.

What the officer did not concede, however, was that this was largely
due to American assistance. Since 2008 the US had given the Egyptian
army equipment worth $23 million to identify and destroy the tunnels,
which for the past eight years have been the lifeline for Gaza’s
population.

Furthermore, in one year since the overthrow of Egypt’s civilian
President Mohamed Morsi the regime in Cairo have closed the Rafah
crossing for a total of 320 days. The reason, they claim, is to counter
security threats in the Sinai.

Apart from the tunnels and Rafah crossing, the Egyptian authorities
had yet another lethal weapon in its arsenal. That was the state-backed
media, which during the same period revelled in an orgy of anti-Hamas
vitriol that reached its climax with their wholehearted support for the
latest Israeli onslaught on Gaza. In a country where press freedom has
long been dead and buried, such ranting could not take place without
official approval and support.

Hmmm.

In case you're wondering, the Egyptian newspaper al-Shorouk published what it claims is the text of the Egyptian proposal on Friday. You can find an English translation here.

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I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com